电子投票算法_电子投票的历史不短

电子投票算法

As we close in on the 2020 elections, here’s an in-depth look at the history of electronic voting. Originally published on Spiceworks in 2016.

在我们接近2020年选举的同时，下面是对电子投票历史的深入了解。 最初 于2016年 在 Spiceworks 上发布。

It was 3 a.m. and Jane Platten was staring into a room full of electronic voting machines in Cleveland, OH at the end of a 22-hour day. She pointed mutely over at the machines, which more than 200,000 people had cast their votes into that day.

凌晨3点，简·普拉顿(Jane Platten)在22小时的工作结束后凝视着俄亥俄州克里夫兰市一个装满电子投票机的房间。 她默默地指着那台机器，那天有超过20万人投票。

Earlier that day, the machines had worked as promised, recording electronic records of each person’s vote on a memory card. These records would be transferred to what Platten and the other workers there called the “GEMS server,” which in turn produced an official tally of votes.

当天早些时候，这些机器按照承诺的那样工作，将每个人的投票电子记录记录在存储卡上。 这些记录将被转移到Platten和那里的其他工作人员所说的“ GEMS服务器”，这反过来又产生了正式的选票。

The stress started when that server stopped working. “Cuyahoga County technicians clustered around the computer, debating what to do,” The New York Times wrote. “A young, business-suited employee from Diebold — the company that makes the voting machines used in Cuyahoga — peered into the screen and pecked at the keyboard.”

当该服务器停止工作时，压力就开始了。 《 纽约时报》写道： “居霍霍加县技术人员聚集在计算机周围，争论该怎么做。” “ Diebold的一位年轻，适合商务人士的雇员–生产Cuyahoga中使用的投票机的公司–凝视着屏幕并啄了键盘。”

Several tense minutes passed, but no one could figure out why the machine wasn’t working. The technicians eventually turned the server off and on again. Once more, the machine started tabulating vote counts and work resumed. But an hour later, the server froze up again. Once more, the technicians were left turning the machine on and off again.

紧张的时光过去了几分钟，但没人能弄清楚机器为什么无法工作。 技术人员最终关闭并重新打开服务器。 机器再次开始将选票计数制成表格并重新开始工作。 但是一个小时后，服务器再次冻结。 再一次，技术人员只能打开和关闭机器。

“When the votes were finally tallied the next day, 10 races were so close that they needed to be recounted,” The New York Times says. “But when Platten went to retrieve paper copies of each vote — generated by the Diebold machines as they worked — she discovered that so many printers had jammed that 20 percent of the machines involved in the recounted races lacked paper copies of some of the votes.”

《纽约时报》说：“当第二天票数最终确定时，十场比赛是如此接近，需要重新计算。” “但是当Platten去检索由Diebold的机器在工作时产生的每张选票的纸质副本时，她发现有那么多打印机被卡住，参与重新计算的比赛的机器中有20％缺少某些选票的纸质副本。 ”

Platten’s story is not isolated. Reports exist about electronic voting machines “flipping” votes, getting vote counts wrong, and suffering from poor security protections. Designed to make voting easier and counting ballots faster, early proponents of electronic voting machines touted how these machines further democratized elections, reducing the difficulty of getting paper ballots to every corner of the country. In short: The origins of electronic voting machines were pure.

普拉滕的故事不是孤立的。 关于电子投票机“ 翻转 ”投票，选票不正确以及安全保护不佳的报道。 电子投票机的早期支持者旨在简化投票和加快计票工作，吹捧这些机如何使选举民主化，从而减少了将纸制选票运往该国各个角落的困难。 简而言之：电子投票机的起源是纯粹的。

So what are those origins? What might the future of electronic voting look like? And should we be concerned about a DDoS attack like the one against Dyn in October 2016 disrupting future elections?

那么这些起源是什么？ 电子投票的未来会是什么样？ 我们是否应该担心像2016年10月针对Dyn的DDoS攻击破坏未来的选举？

电子投票机的兴起 (The rise of e-voting machines)

In the 2000 presidential election, America’s voting process made international news after problems with voting machines caused a last minute recount in Florida, which ultimately led to a Supreme Court decision to break the deadlock between George W. Bush and Al Gore.

在2000年总统大选中，由于投票机问题导致佛罗里达的最后一分钟重新计票，美国的投票程序引起了国际关注，这最终导致最高法院决定打破乔治·W·布什与阿尔·戈尔之间的僵局。

To prevent future voting problems and stave off potential embarrassments, the US government passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002. Among other things, HAVA sought to replace punchcard and lever-based voting machines by giving states $3.9 billion to invest in more modern equipment.

为防止未来的投票问题并避免潜在的尴尬，美国政府于2002年通过了《 帮助美国投票法》 (HAVA)。除其他事项外，HAVA试图通过向各州提供39亿美元的投资来取代打Kong卡和基于杠杆的投票机。现代设备。

“The federal largesse led states to begin buying Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines from companies such as Sequoia and Diebold,” The Verge says. “Early DREs left no auditable paper trail: votes were recorded directly to digital memory.” And as time went on, reports emerged about problems with machines. With no paper trail to verify that the votes had been correctly counted, some election officials were left unable to confirm or deny such reports.

The Verge说： “联邦政府的慷慨解囊促使各州开始从红杉和Diebold等公司购买直接记录电子(DRE)投票机。” “早期的DRE没有留下可审计的书面记录：选票直接记录在数字存储器中。” 随着时间的流逝，出现了有关机器问题的报告。 由于没有书面证据可以证明选票是否已正确计算，一些选举官员无法确认或否认此类报道。

Soon, worrying reports began to emerge about security flaws in voting machines such as WINVote, which one computer scientist said had only been safe because no one tried to hack them. Plagued by serious security flaws and an insecure Wi-Fi feature to tally votes, WINVote machines were employed in Virginia alone for over 12 years (the state decommissioned the machines last year).

不久，关于诸如WINVote之类的投票机安全漏洞的报道开始令人担忧， 一位计算机科学家表示，之所以安全是因为没有人试图破解它们。 由于严重的安全漏洞和不安全的Wi-Fi功能无法进行投票困扰，WINVote机器仅在弗吉尼亚州就已使用了12年以上(该州去年停用了这些机器)。

But here’s the thing: Despite warnings from computer scientists and software developers, there is almost no evidence any voting systems have ever been successfully hacked. In fact, experts will frequently say the real danger isn’t hacking, but error.

但这就是问题：尽管计算机科学家和软件开发人员发出了警告，但几乎没有证据表明有任何投票系统曾被成功入侵过。 实际上，专家经常会说真正的危险不是黑客入侵，而是错误。

Image credit: 图片来源： Tim EvansonTim Evanson

“If there are guys who are trying to tamper with elections through manipulation of software, we would have seen evidence of it,” says Ed Felten, a computer scientist at Princeton. “Nobody ever commits the perfect crime the first time. We would have seen a succession of failed attempts leading up to possibly a successful attempt. We’ve never seen it.”

普林斯顿大学的计算机科学家埃德·费尔滕说： “如果有人试图通过操纵软件来篡改选举，我们会看到证据。” “没有人第一次犯下完美的罪行。 我们会看到一系列失败的尝试导致可能的成功尝试。 我们从未见过。”

This is where things get strange. While state officials cite hacking as a reason to replace faulty touch-screen voting machines and media publications stoke fears that a hacker could turn an election, the real concern is more basic: Will the machines themselves work?

这就是事情变得奇怪的地方。 虽然州官员以黑客为理由来替换有故障的触摸屏投票机，而媒体出版物则引发了人们对黑客可能会选举的担忧，但真正的担忧却更为根深蒂固：这些机器本身会发挥作用吗？

没有100％的正常运行时间 (There’s no such thing as 100% uptime)

The truth is no computer system has 100% uptime. And the irony surrounding machines that were supposed to remove the paper ballots and the arduous counting process to make things easier? It turns out electronic voting machines that produce a paper trail are actually easier to deal with.

事实是，没有计算机系统具有100％的正常运行时间。 具有讽刺意味的是，周围的机器本应去除纸票和繁琐的计数过程，以使事情变得更容易？ 事实证明，产生纸质记录的电子投票机实际上更易于处理。

After all, proving that an election has been fairly settled is a lot easier when you can show the losing side a paper trail. Most states do perform post-election audits to verify vote counts. But a small number of states that use paperless DRE voting machines have no audit mechanisms in place and no paper trail to audit in the first place.

毕竟，当您可以向失败的一方显示纸迹时，证明选举已经公平解决会容易得多。 大多数州都进行选举后审核，以核实选票数。 但是，少数使用无纸化DRE投票机的州没有适当的审核机制，也没有任何纸张痕迹可以进行审核。

“The problem with putting these auditing systems in place is the same one keeping more reliable voting machines from the booths in the first place: a lack of money and political will,” Wired says. “There’s new voting equipment out there that’s much more secure than the machines states purchased in bulk a decade or more ago, but only a handful of states and municipalities — Rhode Island, DC, and parts of Wisconsin among them — have upgraded in the past year.”

Wired表示 ：“将这些审计系统部署到位的问题在于，首先要从摊位中获得更可靠的投票机：缺乏资金和政治意愿。” “那里有一种新的投票设备，其安全性比十年或更早之前批量购买的机器要安全得多，但过去只有少数几个州和直辖市(罗德岛，哥伦比亚特区以及威斯康星州的部分地区)进行了升级年。”

“I think the early enthusiasm for this technology has faded and what we’re seeing is a shift toward what should be the next phase, which is hybrid systems combining an electronic record and a paper record,” Alex Halderman told The Verge back in 2012. “This really should be seen as an advance and not as a reversion or anything like manufacturers were originally painting it. It’s really a big security improvement over both paper and purely electronic systems.”

“我认为这项技术的早期热情已经减弱，我们看到的是向下一阶段的转变，这是结合了电子记录和纸质记录的混合系统，” Alex Halderman 在2012年告诉《 The Verge》 。 “这确实应该被看作是一种进步，而不是一种回归，或者像制造商最初将其涂漆一样。 与纸张和纯电子系统相比，这确实是一个很大的安全性改进。”

光学扫描仪的兴起 (The rise of optical scanners)

But there’s one type of electronic voting machine that stands above touch-screen voting machines in terms of security and efficacy. It’s the optical scan voting machine, a piece of technology that was originally manufactured en masse to help grade college entrance exams. Just like with standardized tests, citizens cast their votes “by filling in an oval, box, or similar shape on a paper ballot.” A machine then reads — and tabulates — the ballot.

但是就安全性和有效性而言，有一种电子投票机位于触摸屏投票机之上。 这是光学扫描投票机，这项技术最初大量生产以帮助对高考进行评分。 只需用标准化考试一样，公民投票 “通过在椭圆形框，或在纸上选票相似的形状填充。” 然后，一台机器读取该选票并将其制成表格。

The irony, of course, hits you over the head: The basic technology that makes these machines work has been around for years. Progress it seems is sometimes intelligent regression.

当然，具有讽刺意味的是，打动您的是：使这些机器正常工作的基本技术已经存在了很多年。 进步有时似乎是智能回归。

Unlike with touch-screen voting machines, votes and ballots are “immediately tangible to the voters; they see it with their own eyes, because they personally record it.” And if a recount or audit needs to conducted? There’s a paper trail that’s easy to access.

与触摸屏投票机不同，投票和选票“立即对选民有形； 他们用自己的眼睛看到它，因为他们亲自记录下来。” 如果需要重新计票或审计？ 有一条纸迹很容易访问。

Image credit: 图片来源： Tom WrobleskiTom Wrobleski

Some experts say the use of optical scanning machines leads to “perfect elections,” where voters are confident in the results and candidates are able to confirm the accuracy of the final count. Speaking to The New York Times in 2008, the Florida election official Ion Sancho said his error rate using optical scan voting machines was “three-quarters of a percent at its highest, and has dipped as low as three-thousands of a percent.”

一些专家说，使用光学扫描仪会导致“完美的选举”，选民对结果充满信心，候选人可以确认最终计数的准确性。 佛罗里达州选举官员爱恩·桑乔(Ion Sancho)在2008年对《纽约时报》(New York Times)的讲话中说，他使用光学扫描投票机的错误率“最高时为百分之四分之三，而低至百分之三千。”

But Sancho raises another important advantage of optical scan voting machines: It’s trustworthy. “In one recent contest, a candidate claimed that his name had not appeared on the ballot in one precinct,” The New York Times says. “So Sancho went into the Leon County storage, broke the security seals on the records, and pulled out the ballots. The name was there; the candidate was wrong.”

但是Sancho提出了光学扫描投票机的另一个重要优势：这是值得信赖的。 《纽约时报》说：“在最近的一次竞赛中，一名候选人声称自己的名字没有出现在选区中。” “因此，桑乔进入莱昂县的仓库，打破了唱片上的安全封条，并抽出了选票。 名字在那里。 候选人错了。”

The candidate ended up apologizing. As Sancho points out, you couldn’t do this with touch-screen voting machines. “I like that certainty,” he says. “The paper ends the discussion.”

候选人最终道歉。 正如Sancho指出的那样，您无法使用触摸屏投票机来做到这一点。 “我喜欢那种确定性，”他说。 “本文结束了讨论。”

如果互联网在选举日中断，会发生什么？ (What happens if the internet breaks on Election Day?)

For all the reported problems with electronic voting machines, there isn’t a significant risk when it comes to US elections, which are decentralized and difficult to hack on a grand scale (plus, only four states use DRE machines without any verified paper trails). But what if a massive DDoS attack like the one against Dyn in October 2016 were to strike on, or after, Election Day?

对于所报告的所有有关电子投票机的问题，在美国选举中，分散且难以大规模篡改的美国选举没有很大的风险(此外， 只有四个州使用的DRE机器没有经过验证的书面记录) 。 但是，如果像2016年10月针对Dyn的DDoS大规模攻击在选举日当天或之后发生怎么办？

“The good news is that even if the Internet goes down on Nov. 8, your vote will still count,” The Boston Globe says. “Few states use computer-based voting machines, and even those machines aren’t online.”

“好消息是，即使11月8日互联网瘫痪，您的投票仍然会很重要，” 《波士顿环球报》说 。 “很少有州使用基于计算机的投票机，甚至那些投票机都不在线。”

The takeaway here is that a large-scale DDoS attack wouldn’t affect the election — but they’d certainly gum things up. Just like those who were unable to access Twitter and Netflix last month, election officials might be unable to check voter registration information against a database. This wouldn’t prevent individuals from voting — hello provisional ballots — but it would make for longer lines.

这里的要点是，大规模的DDoS攻击不会影响选举-但他们肯定会使事情变得艰难。 就像上个月无法访问Twitter和Netflix的人一样，选举官员可能无法根据数据库检查选民注册信息。 这不会阻止个人投票(您好， 临时投票) ，但是会增加排队时间。

Other more mundane things might happen, too. People might, for instance, have a tough time getting the polls without being able to look up directions online.

其他更平凡的事情也可能发生。 例如，人们可能很难在无法在线查找路线的情况下进行民意调查。

Image credit: 图片来源： Down DetectorDown Detector

Then there’s what happens after the voting is over, which is arguably more ominous. “Usually Americans tune in for the quadrennial cable-news election night ritual, celebrated with two-tone maps and portentous pronouncements about the political future,” The Boston Globe writes. Not so without the Internet. You could still watch television, of course, but a lot of those election-night returns are collected through the Internet.” In other words, you’d have to get a good night of sleep before the results rolled in.

然后是投票结束后发生的事情，这可能是不祥的。 《波士顿环球报》写道：“通常，美国人会参加四年一次的有线电视新闻大选之夜仪式，以两色调的地图和对政治前途的宣扬来庆祝。” 没有互联网就不是这样。 当然，您仍然可以看电视，但是很多选举之夜的回报都是通过互联网收集的。” 换句话说，您必须先睡个好觉，然后才能得出结果。

The bottom line: Don’t worry about a DDoS attack doing anything other than making the wait a little longer. Worry about the people who might complain about what that wait means.

最重要的是：除了让等待时间更长之外，别担心DDoS攻击会做什么。 担心那些可能会抱怨等待的人。

30,000英尺的视野 (The 30,000-foot view)

For all the problems with electronic voting methods, counting millions of votes is long, arduous work undercut by the risk of human error. And not all electronic voting methods are created equal — some are decidedly more trustworthy than others.

对于电子投票方法存在的所有问题，数百万张选票是漫长而艰巨的工作，被人为错误的风险所削弱。 并不是所有的电子投票方法都是平等的—有些绝对比其他方法更值得信赖。

While officials continue to explore electronic voting methods such as optical scanners or a new form of “crypto-voting” that’s being spearheaded by a Spanish startup, it’s useful to have a little perspective. Up “until the introduction of what was known as the ‘Australian ballot’ in the 1880s,” History Extra says, every vote was a public affair.

尽管官员们继续探索电子投票方法，例如光学扫描仪或由西班牙初创公司带头的新形式的“加密投票”，但保持一点看法很有用。 “直到1880年代引入所谓的'澳大利亚选票'为止，” Historical Extra表示 ，每次投票都是公众事务。

Developed in the Victoria colony in Australia, the so-called Australian ballot was a private, generic ballot that citizens filled out. Before that, some counties saw their citizens publicly yell their vote with a “yay” or “nay.” Some political campaigns would create their own brightly colored ballots and give them to their supporters.

所谓的澳大利亚选票是在澳大利亚维多利亚州殖民地开发的，是公民填写的私人普通选票。 在此之前，一些县看到其公民以“赞成”或“反对”公开大喊他们的选票。 一些政治运动会创建自己色彩鲜艳的选票，并将其送给支持者。

“Voting against the prevailing mood in one’s own precinct took courage, often physical courage,” History Extra says. Violence was common and bribes were frequent. Legal battles over voter suppression and bribery in the 19th century took on practices such as “cooping,” where campaigns would ply a group of men with alcohol and then take them to the ballot box when they were semi-conscious.

“在自己的区域内反对普遍的情绪需要勇气，通常是身体上的勇气，” Historical Extra说。 暴力是普遍的，贿赂是经常发生的。 在19世纪，有关压制选民和贿赂的法律斗争采用了“合作”这样的做法，在这种情况下，竞选活动会用酒精alcohol住一群男人，然后在他们半昏迷时将他们带到投票箱。

In short, today’s electoral system is far better than it has been. But while states, counties, and the federal government continue to look for better solutions when it comes to electronic voting, today’s electoral system stands to see future improvements as well. After all, when voters are still mailing in ballots in the 21st century, there’s probably a better way.

简而言之，今天的选举制度比以前要好得多。 但是，当州，县和联邦政府在电子投票方面继续寻求更好的解决方案时，今天的选举系统也有望看到未来的进步。 毕竟，当选民在21世纪仍在邮寄选票时，可能会有更好的方法。

Aaron Winston lives in Austin, TX and has written about technology, history, e-commerce and more. Currently, he works as a Content Strategist for the flexible workspace company Hana.

亚伦·温斯顿(Aaron Winston)居住在德克萨斯州的奥斯汀，他撰写了有关技术，历史，电子商务等方面的文章。 目前，他是灵活工作区公司Hana的内容策略师。

翻译自: https://medium.com/lotus-fruit/a-not-so-short-history-of-electronic-voting-8d60d05f1e86

电子投票算法